San Diego Zoo unveils new cheetah cub

Two-week-old cheetah cub, Kiburi, opened his eyes for the first time last week
and purred when he discovered his milk bottle at the San Diego Zoo's Safari
Park.

Kiburi, which means "proud" in Swahili, is the first of the 134 cheetahs born at the Safari Park to come from two hand-raised parents, Makena and Quint.

Makena gave birth to two cubs on November 14, but the first one died shortly after due to unknown causes. As is common in the wild, the mother showed signs of abandoning Kiburi. Due to the high mortality rate in cheetah cubs, it is not in their best interest to raise only one cub.

As a result, Kiburi was taken into the nursery shortly after birth and began "purring from day one" according to his handler.

"Kiburi is one of our most purring cats that we've had. Most of the cats we get - cheetah cubs - don't usually show too much emotion, if you want to call it that, but Kiburi was purring day one," explained Sandy Craig, the senior nursery keeper at the Safari Park.

The 1.4 pound little big cat spends 20 to 22 hours a day sleeping in the nursery, but gets woken up every two and half hours to feed on a bottle of special formula.

"Kiburi really loves his bottle. Anytime we wake him up to eat, he instantly knows it's time to eat and he starts rooting around and as soon as he gets a taste for the milk he scoffs it down and soon after he goes back to sleep," his handler added.

If they're lucky, visitors to the 1,800-acre Safari Park, which is run by the non-profit San Diego Zoo, can see Kiburi at the nursery in the Animal Care Center during the two hours a day that he isn't sleeping.